"
This led to the publishing his book on that subject contemporaneously
with Mr. Wallace's memoir. There has been no jealousy or rivalry between
these gentlemen. Mr. Wallace gracefully acknowledges the priority of Mr.
Darwin's claim, and attributes to him the credit of having elaborated
and sustained it in a way to secure for it universal attention. These
facts are mentioned in order to show the competency of Mr. Wallace as a
witness as to the true character of Darwinism.
Mr. Wallace, in "The Theory of Natural Selection," devotes a chapter to
the consideration of the objections urged by the Duke of Argyll, in his
work on the "Reign of Law," against that theory. Those objections are
principally two: first, that design necessarily implies an intelligent
designer; and second, that beauty not being an advantage to its
possessor in the struggle for life, cannot be accounted for on the
principle of the survival of the fittest. The Duke, he says, maintains
that contrivance and beauty indicate "the constant supervision and
interference of the Creator, and cannot possibly be explained by the
unassisted action of any combination of laws. Now, Mr. Darwin's work,"
he adds, "has for its main object to show that all the phenomena of
living things--all their wonderful organs and complicated structures,
their infinite variety of form, size, and color, their intricate and
involved relations to each other--may have been produced by the action
of a few general laws of the simplest kind, laws which are in most cases
mere statements of admitted facts.
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